Various wireless access technologies have been proposed or implemented to enable mobile stations to perform communications with other mobile stations or with wired terminals coupled to wired networks. Examples of wireless access technologies include GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) and UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) technologies, defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP); and CDMA 2000 (Code Division Multiple Access 2000) technologies, defined by 3GPP2.
As part of the continuing evolution of wireless access technologies to improve spectral efficiency, to improve services, to lower costs, and so forth, new standards have been proposed. One such new standard is the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard from 3GPP, which seeks to enhance the UMTS technology. The LTE standard is also referred to as the EUTRA (Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access) standard.
More recent developments of LTE have proposed the use of multiple component carriers to increase the available bandwidth of wireless communications. Each component carrier can have a frequency bandwidth of up to 20 megahertz (MHz). Multiple component carriers are aggregated together to increase the overall bandwidth available to user equipment. Each component carrier appears as an LTE carrier to a mobile station.
An issue associated with using multiple component carriers is that a mobile station may have to perform blind decoding of PDCCH (physical downlink control channel) in multiple component carriers to find relevant control information for the mobile station. Such blind decoding may cause wasteful power consumption at the mobile station.